Kirk Hammett Quotes

Deep Purple definitely belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 'Cause they had great songs, great musicianship, they had an impact, and they're a huge influence on the heavy metal community as a whole.

It's definitely true that Stevie Ray Vaughan is one of my all-time favorite guitarists.

If I had unlimited funds, wall space and storage, I would collect a lot more things, like 'Planet of the Apes,' 'Star Wars,' science fiction stuff, autographs, and prop guns and weapons. I have to draw the line somewhere.

One thing I've noticed over the years is that young players - I mean 10- and 12-year-olds - really like my guitar style. There's something in my guitar style that they totally can latch onto and learn quickly, and then go from there to your Yngwie Malmsteens or your Steve Vais or whatever.

Getting sequestered and not really knowing what to do with your time and then discovering, 'Oh, I can watch a bunch of horror movies' has probably played out in a lot of people's discovery of horror.

I've been into horror movies ever since I was five years old.

We wanted to offer something new to our audience. I hate it when bands stop taking chances.

Guitar players in the nineties seem to be reacting against the technique oriented eighties.

Although I'm a lead guitarist, I'd say that a good 95 percent of my time onstage is spent playing rhythm.

There's something about a wah pedal that really gets my gut going! People will probably say, 'He's just hiding behind the wah.' But that isn't the case. It's just that those frequencies really bring out a lot of aggression in my approach.

The concept of clearing one's mind before performing a task so that it is consumed by nothing but that task, yet is open at the same time to anything that might happen - that concept can be applied to playing guitar, and it's enormously helpful for improvising.

The main riff for 'SandMan' was just something I wrote one night.

I think it's morally wrong to keep someone away from what keeps him happy.

I went through a whole blues period in the Nineties, and that had some influence on 'Load' and 'ReLoad.'

After months of playing air guitar to 'Free Bird', what really got me into guitar was watching a documentary about Jimi Hendrix and picking up the Woodstock soundtrack. Listening to his version of 'Star Spangled Banner' and 'Purple Haze.' My brother played acoustic guitar and, idolising him, I thought, 'I'm going to get a guitar.'

I've always loved horror, I've always loved collecting, I've always loved weird and macabre things, and I've always loved conventions. So what could be better than having your own Fear FestEviL where all those great and crazy things can be enjoyed by like-minded people under one pretty cool roof? Nothing!

I love this pedal to death. The only way you could keep me from playing one is by chopping off my legs!

When people are confronted with something they've never seen before, they really don't know how to react.

I love 'True Blood.' I love 'The Walking Dead.' Those are fantastic series.

For the 'Load' album, I was experimenting so much with tone that I had to keep journals on what equipment I was using. For 'Hero of the Day,' I know I used a 1958 Les Paul Standard with a Matchless Chieftain, some Boogie amps and a Vox amp - again, they're all blended.

Technology has given us convenience, but at the same time it's making musicians work harder in that if you really want to make money making music and selling albums, you have to go out there and perform. And hope you sell stuff like merch, and get on YouTube, and all the other ancillary sort of things that go along with that.

For a while I was collecting Satan and devil stuff - you know, anything that had to do with old Beelzebub or Lucifer. But I had to put the brakes on it, because there's a lot of stuff out there, and the collection was just growing too quickly.

I love horror movies in space. I love it when the genre switches over and what was sci-fi becomes horror.

The movie 'Black Cat,' from 1934, is one of my favorite movies.

Guitar playing is both extremely easy for me and extremely difficult for me at the same time.

A good horror movie should have peaks and valleys, a good horror movie should move you emotionally; a good horror movie should be exciting to watch and energizing in a weird kind of way.

When I got my first Marshall amp, it was so empowering. No one ever forgets their first Marshall amp if you're a guitar player pursuing a big powerful sound. I mean, no one ever forgets their first Marshall amp.

For 'Death Magnetic,' I used what I always use, which is my standard touring rack, which is filled with some Boogie stuff and a Marshall that I've had forever.

I've learned that there's a signature Metallica sound, and if we stray too far from that, our fans get impatient, or they just don't understand, or they miss the point. And I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing; it's just something we have to contend with.

It really shocked me just to hear of the fans' response to 'St. Anger' not having guitar solos.

For me, one of the most perfect times to watch a horror movie is when it's cold and raining outside and there's pretty much no outdoor activity to be done. It kind of sets the mood.

Everyone has a side to them that's kind of unexplained and feels misunderstood.

The same sensations that you get in heavy metal are in horror movies. Heavy metal sounds evil and horror movies are evil, ha ha!

I fix things all the time. Every time I do a solo, I re-check it and correct things that don't hit the mark.

I think the whole concept behind lyrics is you better mean what you say, or you should like, become a storyteller. I mean, there's a lot of bands who are just storytellers, and then there are bands who actually have something valid to say. And the bands who have valid points are few and far between.

I'm death obsessed. You know, I have death all over my house. I have a stuffed two headed sheep!

I would have to say I'm bored with the standard rock, guitar solos, but I've done it for five albums now, and this time I wanted to go in a completely different direction. I wasn't interested in showing off any more.

Horror movies started to wane around the onset of World War II, and after World War II, when all the troops came home, people weren't really interested in seeing horror movies, because they had the real horror right on their front doorsteps.

Metallica is a very complicated, fragile thing. On the outside, it's all metal, but on the inside it's very delicate.

I was really, really wild in my early twenties and a bit self-destructive.

On 'Metallica,' I recorded six or seven different guitar solos for almost every song, took the best aspects of each solo, mapped out a master solo and made a composite. Then I learned how to play the composite solo, tightened it up and replayed it for the final version.

My musical tastes change every week.

If a guitar is too easy for me to play, it makes me too laid back. I like to battle with my guitar.

I'm not into that whole Satanic thing. It's just something to fall back on if you don't have much imagination. Singing you fiftieth song about having lunch with Satan
I'm not into it. It's silly.

Because of things like iTunes and streaming and social networking, it's destroyed music. It's destroyed the motivation to go out there and really make the best record possible. It's a shame.